


Quality of Light

by meredyd



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: F/M, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 20:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11448267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/pseuds/meredyd
Summary: Natasha shakes her head, cutting him off, but just as careful not to laugh. “We see things differently, you and I. But not so differently.”





	Quality of Light

On good days, everything is loud and so lovely it makes her heart and eyes hurt. The world, but especially Moscow, is for Natasha a cacophony of nonstop color and sound twisting and ringing out together. She wonders how anyone could even be capable of ignoring so much beauty. It fills her with heat and light, and sometimes perceptible fear. 

That’s when Sonya calms her, speaking to her in a gentle voice, stilling her fluttering hands with knitting or cards or entwined fingers. Or something to do, there is so much to do: plays and parties to attend, dresses to try on, art and music to soak into herself. What would Natasha do without Sonya? She surely would be lost. But each time Natasha thinks to say this, something stops her, more than it would have in the much quieter version of the world they’ve left behind them. More and more, she does not tell Sonya her every thought, keeping some things closely hidden, only for herself. She tests whether or not she likes it, whether or not it’s comfortable, and isn’t certain at all.

Today Marya has left them to their own devices, and they wander through the streets with their arms linked together, headed nowhere in particular. They step over snowbanks into a small alley lined with little shops. Natasha prefers the city at night, bathed in gold and white, not the sedate grey and blue of the late afternoon. Something about the afternoon light leaves her unmoored, confused. Sonya is laughing about something and pointing and Natasha has lost track of their conversation but she loves Sonya’s laugh, how deep it is, that unlike herself Sonya saves it for special occasions. Natasha finds she must laugh at the world to make sense of it’s largeness, and wonders at what would come in the silence if that wasn’t the case.

-

On bad days the world seems nothing but silence, just him in the drafty largeness of the old house like a ghost, wandering and listening for echoes. It seems every man Pierre knows is fighting, although he can tell himself with confidence that’s not the truth - Moscow is full of people, people he doesn’t know, cannot make himself know. None of them trusted, and so none of them worth the extension of himself out of this dire, hidden place that he knows he’d have to make each time, fair or not. 

When the words he’s reading have stared to bleed together, one paragraph he’s gone over and over at least six times, he makes himself with great effort put on his overcoat and go for a walk. It’s warm for the winter, but cloudy, the sky is only dull and he can look straight up where the sun is hidden. There was a time Andrey would have been here too, or Hélène, early in their marriage before her teasing took on the sharp, bored tone it now had. Either idly commenting on the way he squinted up into the hidden, grey light so unpressed by a lack of destination. 

He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and keeps walking, past a line of women that seems not to end, all beautifully dressed, gossiping and laughing, when two of them spin sideways into his shoulder and just as quickly away. They’ve walked far beyond where he can see, before he can apologize to them for his rudeness. The light of their happiness fades in their wake and Pierre breathes in the stale air, the awful leaden weight of his boots and his fists and himself, turns around, heads home. 

-

“I wasn’t sure you knew of this place, Petrushka,” Natasha says. They walk side-by-side, working on the difficult task of keeping careful pace with each other. Only her hand reaching up to drape lightly on the crook of his elbow. They've neither of them been in settled spirits today, but to be here, right now, seems a small triumph. "Sonya and I walked here one day, soon after arriving - it’s such a lovely little street, don’t you think so? And there’s so much color.”

“I’ve always thought it was—” Pierre pauses, takes the empty time to clean his glasses. Natasha watches his careful consideration of her feelings pass over him, and at the same time his failed yet valiant attempt to hide that he's doing this. 

Natasha shakes her head, cutting him off, but just as careful herself not to laugh. “We see things differently, you and I. But not so differently.”

“Perhaps not,” says Pierre. His voice is thick, Natasha finds herself concerned for only an instant with the idea he may cry. "Tell me, what color is that sound?”

Piano, but played on a smaller instrument than the one in Pierre’s house, drifting from the window of a music shop so they can hear it where they stand. 

It’s his genuine curiosity, not his indulgence, which makes Natasha think carefully about her answer. Sometimes it’s easier to tell when she closes her eyes and lets it float there in the darkness behind them. “Silver. Like the light in some afternoons. You could mistake it for grey, but it’s not, not at all.” 

When she opens her eyes Pierre says nothing, but it’s not nonsense, it makes perfect sense to him, and Natasha’s heart swells watching him tired but trying, and trying, to see it too.


End file.
